


Dead Easy

by conceptstage



Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [20]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 19:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Caleb dies surrounded by people who love him.*A sequel to "Speak Easy"





	Dead Easy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Speak Easy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18898717) by [conceptstage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage). 



Caleb dies surrounded by people who love him.

It’s not how he imagined finally going out. He imagined disappearing into the ether with no one to miss him. He imagined his body being found by city guards several days after the fact and burial in an unmarked grave or maybe he would die in the forest and just waste away into nothing. He thinks he would have liked that.

The first explosion knocked him out. Beau cried out pain but didn’t go down, Nott dodged it easily, and Jester screamed, holding onto his arm, but she stayed on her feet even with his weight falling against her. The second explosion knocked Jester and Nott out and pushed him closer to the cliff of death. Beau grit her teeth but stayed up. The third explosion killed him. Jester and Nott started to burn but Beau dodged it entirely.

She gasped for breath as her lungs filled with smoke and she began to feel light headed. She fell to one knee on weak legs but looked up as three shadows exited from the smoke. The first figure that she saw as the smoke cleared was one she recognized. Trent Ikithon. He was smiling victoriously and she wanted nothing more than to knock it off his face. The second figure was a tall, well muscled man with short, dark hair and a red, relatively fresh scar across his cheeks and nose. The third was a demure, short haired woman with cold eyes that sent a chill down Beau’s spine.

She took the time it took them to walk closer to look at her friends. Jester was still breathing, though it was shallow and weak. Nott was facing away from her but her hand was twitching. Caleb’s dead blue eyes stared over at her, blank. She felt dizzy at it wasn’t just from blood loss or smoke inhalation.

The large man came closer first, heading straight towards Caleb. He lifted her friend up and walked passed her back towards Trent.

“No,” she groaned with all the strength that she could. She tried to reach for Caleb’s hand that was hanging down but the other man pulled him out of her reach. Each movement of her screaming muscles, each stretch of her burnt skin sent shots of debilitating pain through her body. “Stop, you can’t- You can’t…”

A hand grabbed her jaw and she was forced to look into the eyes of the cold hearted woman. She clicked her tongue in faux sympathy and then grinned. “Poor dear. I think you need to lay down.” She threw Beau to the ground and pressed her foot against the side of Beau’s face to push her farther into the dust. Beau wrapped her hands around the woman's ankle but couldn’t find the strength to pull it off. She hadn’t felt this weak and useless since she was a child. “Maybe you should focus on saving yourself. Let us worry about Herr Ermendrud, ja?”

“Astrid,” Trent called. “Leave your new toy alone for now. We’ll come back for her and the others.”

Astrid pouted and pulled her foot away, though Beau didn’t release her ankle. She laughed. “Oh, I think it likes me. It won’t let me go.”

Beau gave her a weak smirk that pulled at her busted lip and pressed her thumb hard into a pressure point on Astrid’s ankle. Her eyes widened and she cried out in surprise. “You bitch! I can’t feel my leg!” She stumbled back as her right leg flopped uselessly under her and hit the large man’s chest. “What did you do?”

The look on her face was entirely worth it, Beau thought, even as a fire bolt was sent at her face. That was the last thing that she remembered.

 

Jester woke and groaned as a cool cloth was pressed against her forehead. “Momma? What happened?” It took all her will power to force her eyes open and she recognized the pink hair that was falling into her line of vision. “Caducie?” She mumbled. Suddenly, it all came back to her and she gasped. “Whe-Where-?”

“Shh,” Caduceus shushed her gently. “You have to relax. If you try to move to quickly you’ll make yourself sick.”

“Is everyone one alright?” she croaked.

“Don’t worry about that now, you’ll know everything soon enough. Just focus on getting better.”

That answer should have worried her, but she just nodded and drifted back to sleep. The next time she woke, it was to sun in her eyes. She blinked tiredly and paused to yawn and smack her lips. She sat up with a groan and rubbed her eye, looking around the inn room that she was in.

“Take it slow,” Caduceus said as he crossed the room to kneel in front of her. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better. What happened?”

“You, Beau, Nott, and Caleb were out shopping when you were attacked in the street. Do you remember?”

She remembered flashes. She remembered heat and pain and the weight of Caleb’s unconscious body against her side. “A little. Where is everyone else?” She looked around the room and spotted Beau sitting in the other bed. She looked away, ashamed, when Jester caught her eye, and just turned the tea cup around gingerly in her scarred, calloused fingers. “Beau? What happened?”

Beau sniffled and looked back to met her eyes. Her brown eyes were red rimmed and tired. “I’m sorry, Jes. I couldn’t…. I couldn’t- I’m sorry.”

Jester felt tears gather in the corners of her eyes. “Nott?” Beau shook her head. “Caleb.”

“They, uh-” She cut herself off to wipe as her nose with her thumb. “They killed him. And then they took him away. I’m sorry, I couldn’t- Fuck. Fuck!” She jumped to her feet in anger and threw the cup in her hand against the wall. It shattered and left tea dripping down the wallpaper.

Jester flinched at the shatter and the tears started streaming down her cheeks, catching on her trembling lips. Caduceus reached up and wiped a tear away with his large thumb. She sniffled and nodded. “Then we’ll get him back.” She was trying to sound determined was sure that her voice was shaking. “We’ll go and save him.”

Beau nodded. “Yeah. We will.” She dropped back on the bed with her head in her hands. “Sorry about the cup, Cad.”

“No worries. I know better than to give you the expensive ones.”

Beau snorted in laughter despite herself and cleared her throat. “Let’s track down some wizards, shall we?”

 

Nott hadn’t let go of his scarf since she woke up. She had it wrapped around her neck but it was long enough for the ends to be held tightly in each fist as the others loaded up the cart. The sky was dark and full of swirling gray clouds. The rain wouldn’t be long now. Yasha gently picked Nott up and Fjord slid one of the their boxes of rations under her. Yasha sat her back down on top of it as Fjord left, but Yasha stayed and looked her in the eye.

“Are you alright?” she asked, stoically.

Nott shrugged. “Are you?”

Yasha hesitated. “I’ll survive. I lost Zuala, I survived. I lost Molly, I survived. You’ll survive too.”

“Will I?” She thought about never seeing Caleb smile again and her chest felt cold. “I’m not so sure.”

Yasha, however, was sure. “You will. You have your husband and son who still need you. You’ll survive for them until you can survive for yourself again.”

Nott sighed and started rolling up the ends of the scarf idly. “Thanks. It still hurts.”

“Yes, it does. And it always will.”

It wasn’t the most uplifting speech ever but there was something about her frankness that was comforting. Nott couldn’t really put a name to what Yasha’s words made her feel. It was cold but satisfying, like reaching the end of a melancholy story. “Yeah,” she mumbled getting to her feet to start helping everyone pack up the cart and put up the canvas covering.

Caduceus climbed up into the front seat and looked up at the sky just in time for a raindrop to fall down and land square on the tip of his nose. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and adjusted his wide brim hat to cover his face. He backed into the cover to see the others getting comfortable, squeezed together around the supplies. “Ready?”

Beau was leaning her head on Jester’s shoulder and Jester was running her hand kindly through Beau’s loose hair. “Yep.”

“Let’s head out,” Fjord said from the other side of the cart.

Caduceus nodded and turned to look forward, clicking his tongue to get the horses moving forward towards Rexentrum.

 

Fjord gave a rage-filled battle cry and whipped up his sword to protect himself. The Mordenkainens Sword that was floating in the center of the tower foyer clashed against it and he nearly lost his footing. The force pressed against him and he felt a layer of sweat gathering under his armor.

Yasha ran up behind him and brought her Magician's Judge up in a wide arc to shatter the sword in the air. “Go!” she yelled, adjusted her hands on the hilt of her sword. Eodwulf growled at them and summoned ice to his fingers. Yasha paused to look back at the rest of the group over her shoulder. “Go! Find Caleb!”

Beau grit her teeth and looked between her and Fjord, doubt in her eyes. Jester grabbed her elbow and gave her pleading eyes until she licked her lips and nodded. “Don’t die!” she called, then she turned and lead the others up the stone stairs.

Nott ran around Beau’s legs to take the lead, hurrying up the stairs on all fours with leaping strides. “Hurry, there’s only a few hours-!” She was cut off as she breached the top of the stairwell and immediately had to dodge a dark, burning orb of necrotic energy that was hurtled towards her. She slid across the floor and pulled out her crossbow, aiming it where the orb had come from on instinct. Beau came out next, sliding to a stop and holding out her hand to stop Jester and Caduceus before they could leave the safety of the stairway.

“Astrid, right?” she asked, feigning nonchalance. They had come to a large chamber that looked like it was designed for dining but it was void of furniture and filled only with cobwebs. It wasn’t set up for long term living, they’d managed to catch up to the wizards when they stopped to rest in a defunct wizard’s towers.

The woman gave her a teasing smile and wiggled her fingers in greeting. “Ah, _mein neues Lieblingsspielzeug_. Did you miss me?”

“You know, you’d be really hot if it wasn’t for all the crazy. Where’s Caleb?”

The woman shrugged. “Who?”

“We won’t call him by the name you knew him by, he’s not the same man,” Nott insisted, aiming her crossbow. “His name is Caleb now. Where is he?”

“It won’t matter, you’ll never reach him.” She raised her hand to cast another spell and Nott loosed a bolt which hit her in the shoulder and interrupted her words. “Agh!”

“Keep going,” Nott said, quickly moving towards cover across the room. “Keep going!”

“Nott?!” Beau exclaimed, waving the clerics forwards to started moving to the next stairwell around the curve of the outer wall.

Nott looked over the box she’d ducked behind to shoot at Astrid again. “Keep going!” she called again. “Save my boy!”

Beau looked up the stairs just in time to see Jester’s dress disappear around the curved stairs and moved to follow. When she reached the top of the second set of stairs, she had to stumble to a stop to keep from crashing into Jester. Beau followed her eyes and they landed on a man standing in the center of what appeared to be an old library.

“I knew you would come,” Trent said, folding his hands over the expensive red jewel that sat on top of his cane. “Though, I must admit, I’m impressed you managed to find us. I thought we covered our tracks better than that. Tell me, what gave us away?”

Beau pointed to the cane. “Locate Object.”

The got a chuckle from him. “Ah, so it was my _Eitelkeit_ , my vanity, that will lead to my downfall. Fitting. I will not go down without a fight.”

“Course not,” said Beau, nodding to Caduceus. “That would be boring.” Caduceus nodded back and started moving up the wood ladder to the second floor of the library and the single door on the far wall.

Trent clicked his tongue. “Ah, ah, not so fast, my large friend.” He pointed at Caduceus and a single trail of lightning fizzled at his fingertips until it flew through the air at Caduceus' back.

Jester surged forward and whipped of her shield, deflecting the lightning into the wood ceiling which splinted and scorched. With a wave of her hands, she summoned her serrated lollipop and grasped the stick with both fingers. “I don’t think so, you cryptkeeper!”

Beau started to run forward, pulling her staff off her back and crying out in rage as she swung it forward. “Hey, motherfucker! Over here!”

The staff hit a magic shield that rippled in the air and then disappeared once more. Trent smirked. “You didn’t think it’d be that easy, did you? This old man still has some tricks.”

A wave of force hit them both in the chest and threw them backwards, Beau head first into the stone wall and Jester back against the bookshelf. The dusty, distressed books tumbled off the shelf in an avalanche over her head. She took a deep breath and wipe the dust from her eyes, then cried out and sent her lollipop forward. “Eat this!” the blades started turning around the sucker and it sent up sparks when it hit his shield. Trent frowned and Jester saw the shield getting weaker around him.

Beau sat up, her vision spinning but she picked one of the three Trents that she could see at the moment and activated her gloves, sending an arc of lightning through the air towards his face. It hit his shield and hesitated for a moment but then pushed through it to sting him directly in the center of the chest.

The shield faded away and it threw him across the room to crash into the plush chair and send up a cloud of dust. He growled and waved his cane towards Beau. Her vision began to clear just in time for her to dodge a giant blue hand that flew passed her and tried to grab at her arm but couldn’t doge to orb of fire that barreled towards her, scorching the stones and filling the room with dense heat. She gasped for breath against the wall and reached up to touch the wet spot on the back of her head, but put that concern to the side for now. She looked up at Trent and he pointed his cane at her once more.

“Do me a favor, Beauregard dear. **_Die_ **.”

Beau’s eyes widened. She recognized that spell. She’d seen the wizards in the Dynasty use it on convicted criminals. The instant death spell, Power Word Kill. She knew that she was injured enough for it to affect her but she never felt the cold grip of death.

“Counterspell!” Fjord exclaimed, bursting from the stairwell and holding up his hand. Yasha pushed passed him and growled as she stormed towards him, Nott perched on her shoulders with her crossbow loaded and aimed.

“Eat shit, motherfucker!” Nott exclaimed, shooting him and then jumping onto the floor, landing in a roll.

He knocked the bolt out of the air with his cane. Yasha surged forward, screaming at the top of her lungs, and ran him through with her sword. He gasped and twitched on the end until the light left this eyes.

Jester rushed over to help keep her steady and Cured her wounds by running her fingers over the line of Beau’s hair. Beau gave her a small smile and leaned back against the wall, gasping for breath and holding the burn on her side as it healed up under her fingers. Jester moved on to Heal the frostbite on the tip of Fjord’s nose and along his cheeks.

Someone cleared their throat and everyone one turned to look up at Caduceus, standing resolute at the railing of the second floor balcony. “It’s ready.”

Jester and Beau exchanged a glance and Beau pushed off the wall to lead everyone up the single wooden ladder. They stepped into the far room, empty except for the old, mussed bed in the corner where their missing, deceased friend lay dead. There were faded green, moth eaten curtains that fluttered silently in the wind. Caduceus had incense burning on the floor in an arc around the bed and there were glittering shards of diamond floating in the air around Caleb’s chest.

This was the first full ritual that Beau had seen. The last thing the team had done had been for her, she wasn’t sure what was expected of her so she stayed in the back and let the others filter in and gather around the bed.

Nott rushed forward first, climbing up into the bed to kneel on his other side and take his cold, clammy hand. He was bloated and kind of gross actually and barely even looked like the man they all loved.

“How close did we cut it?” she asked, pushing his long hair out of his face.

“Seven hours,” Caduceus said quietly. “Seven hours and it would have been too late.”

Nott let out a shaky breath. “I’ll do it first,” she said. “I know…” she paused and tried to plan her words. “... I know that you might not want to come back. Life hasn’t been good to you. It’s understandable. And if you don’t come back I won’t be mad, I promise. We’ll bury you in a pretty garden and visit you all the time to talk. But I’ll be sad for the rest of my life and I’ll miss you everyday. So please come back and give life a chance.”

Everyone glanced around to see who would go next and were honestly surprised when Yasha stepped up. She pulled something out of her pocket, a small paper bag that had been folded and folded until it was pocket sized. Jester recognized it from the town they’d stopped in for supplies a few days ago, Yasha had left the store with it and had refused to answer her curious questions about what it was. She unfolded it slowly, taking her sweet time without saying a word, and then pulled out a folding straight razor. The handle was beautiful, obviously some kind of antique, with delicate carvings in ivory. She sat it on his chest and picked up his hand to cover it and keep it from falling.

She stepped away then, nonchalauntly folding the paper bag back up and shoving it back in her pocket.

No one moved to be next. Everyone had an idea of something that they could contribute. Jester wanted to tearfully tell him the story of the day they met from her point of view. Tell him how smart and suave she’d thought he was. She thought that he would get a kick out of that. Fjord wanted to apologize. For pointing his sword at him, for doubting him, for never fully trusting that he had the group’s best interests at heart. Caduceus had the Parapet of Wound Closure in his hands and was turning it over in his fingers but he didn’t move to hand it over. He turned to Beau instead.

She was practically vibrating beside him, bouncing on the balls of her feet and breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth like she was trying to psych herself up. She shook out her hands nervously but didn’t move right away. Caduceus cleared his throat and gently pushed her forward with a kind hand on her back.

“Go on,” he whispered. “I think he’d want to hear from you.”

Beau blinked at him in surprise. “I thought… I thought you’d try to stop me. What if I mess it up? What if he won’t come back and it’s all my fault?”

“You won’t mess it up. You couldn’t. You’re a sister to him. Anything that you have to say to him, he’ll understand.”

Beau frowned and looked at Jester, who grinned at her with tears in her eyes and stepped to the side. Beau took another deep breath and moved forward to stand beside the bed. She cleared her throat and glanced once more over her shoulder before finally turning to look at his face.

“Hey,” she said, then she winced because it was lame. “I don’t… know if you can hear me. I don’t know if you care. Maybe you’ve already moved on and I’m just wasting my breath. But I don’t think I’d ever forgive myself if I didn’t at least try.” She sighed and shoved her hands in her pockets. “I won’t lie, you’ve got more reasons than most to just say ‘fuck it’. If you decided that this wasn’t worth it, that we weren’t worth it, I would understand. I want you to know that I… I love you. And I hope you realize how hard that is for me to say. Usually, it’s not worth it, to love things or people. Because they leave or they get taken away and there’s nothing you can do about it, so what’s the point. But you, uh…” she sniffled and wiped at her nose, pointedly avoiding Nott’s eyes from across Caleb’s body. “You made it worth it. No matter what happens next, you were worth it. Even when we fought… maybe especially when we fought, I was grateful to have you around.” She let out the breath she’d been holding and turned stare at Caduceus' chest plate, not feeling brave enough to meet his eyes and possibly see disappointment in them. “H-How was that?”

Before anyone could answer, there was a sharp, unsteady breath from behind her. She gasped and spun around to see Caleb’s chest start to rise and fall. Nott burst out into tears and pressed her face against Caleb's neck as the normal color and shape began to return to his skin. A cheer went up in the room and everyone moved to crowd around his still unconscious body.

 

Beau was on watch when he woke up. She was staring into the flames as they licked at the stick that she was idly waving through it and nearly jumped out of her skin when he groaned from the other side of the camp. She didn’t move right away, thinking that it might have just been a false alarm. He groaned in his sleep sometimes. Nightmares, she assumed.

But when she leaned around the fire to find his face in the flickering orange light she saw his blue eyes staring tiredly back at her.

“Beau?”

She threw the half chared stick into the fire and crawled on her hands and knees to kneel beside him. “The fuck are you doing up? Cad said it would be a few days still.” She pushed him down when he tried to sit up. “Didn’t you give me this exact lecture when it was my turn to go through this?”

Caleb groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. “And if I remember correctly, you woke me up in the middle of the night to make me teach you a spell anyway and we stayed up for hours.”

“Yeah well, you were dead twice as long as I was.”

He blinked at her, his eyes still unfocused. “Was I?”

She sighed, her posture softening. “Yeah. We were almost too late. Seven hours.” She handed him her waterskin and helped him take several large gulps. “But I don’t have any spells to teach you, I only know the one. So go the fuck to sleep.” When he was finished drinking she pushed him back into his bedroll and crawled back to her spot across the fire.

He was quiet for a few minutes but she knew that he wasn’t asleep. “You know… when I was dying… I was certain that it was the end. That I wasn’t going to come back. That, even if you were able to do the ritual, that it wouldn’t work because my soul wouldn’t want to come back.”

“Then why did you?” She asked, trying to keep the curious tone out of her voice and appear stoic instead.

He fingered the folded, ivory straight razor that had been sitting in his breast pocket since they’d left the tower but didn’t seem confused or surprised by it, like he didn’t even need to ask where it had come from. “Because I love you too. And The Mighty Nein are worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so bad at fight sequences, y'all. But I tried. I hope you enjoyed it anyway.


End file.
